I thought this was gonna be better than their 2 matches last year up until the 1st GTS. Maybe not as special or significant as the MITB match but a tighter match.
Cena saying "Can I get least something" along with Punk and Heyman's reactions made the finish ite with me for me a bit at least.
Didn't Punk use the moonsault in his early ROH days. I liked the pulling new tricks out story with Cena using a tope and Punk using the crossface for example. If you're gonna do new stuff though make it look half decent. The moonsault was pig ugly and got nowhere near Cena. I get the "he doesn't do that move so it failed" story but it just looked TOO ugly. I get why they did that and the german double pin and the thinking behind them was sound but the execution in the context of the match wasn't so.
The moonsault was pretty bad looking. From what I can remember Punk never did a good moonsault but that was exceptionally bad. Haven't seen the whole match because I got back from King of Trios at like 10:30 and I found a stream and Punk was already in an STF. So basically I saw the finishing stretch, which while exciting did seem an awful lot like they were just spamming finishers. But then again I did miss the set up to that stretch so I should be too critical.
Punk was doing shitty moonsaults in his early WWE run, and he knows it. IIRC he joked in a 2007 WWE magazine I got that CM stood for Crooked Moonsault.
I remember him saying that on something else too. I thought someone was going to get seriously hurt when Punk jumped for that moonsault. When Cena rolled out of the way, he almost rolled straight under Punk, looked pretty dangerous. Hoping Punk will never do that again because apart from that everything he did was amazing. From his character work and expressions to his control segments. The man was on point.
At least it was somewhat apparent that Cena moved out of the way when they replayed it. That moonsault wasn't meant to connect anyway, which is why it looked so horrible initially, but upon seeing that replay, it made it slightly better.
He also used it during like, the 24th minute of a 27-minute match, if I remember correctly. He was exhausted and desperate and hadn't done one in a long time, so from a logical standpoint, it doesn't bother me that it looked so terrible.
wXw FAN 2012 - Night 1
Axel "Axeman" Tischer vs. Davey Richards
Slightly better than the match from Axeman against Eddie Edwards from last year. Especially some counters were really great. ***3/4+
RockSkillet (Jay Skillet & Jonathan Gresham) vs. LDRS (Zack Sabre Jr. & Marty Scurll)
This match had everything: Amazing mat wrestling at the beginning, a good isolation in the middle and a very hot finish. ****
Big Van Walter vs. Bad Bones
A great heavyweight war. Both gave everything they had and due to this match, Walter was not able to compete at the next day. ****-
I can't be the only one here that watched King of Trios, can I? Best match of the whole thing was the SENDAI Girls vs The Young Bucks with Mike Bennett. He's a bunch of 5' tall 130 pound Japanese women beating the shit out of 6' tall muscled (well, at least Bennett is...) men... and they made it work! The whole thing was filled with badass matches but this one was on another level. Easily my favorite match of the year.
Davey Richards and Kyle O'Reilly vs. Sami Callihan and BJ Whitmer from Friday's AAW show. This was one stiff as fuck tag match. At a little over 22 minutes, this match received a couple "this is awesome" chants and a standing ovation in the middle of it. Light on selling (of course) but it had a finish that came out of no where. I'll have to wait for the DVD, but maybe ****1/4? Maybe less, maybe more. Look out for this one.
And avoid, at all costs, Elgin vs. Silas for the AAW Heritage and Heavyweight Championships in an I Quit Match. Overbooked snoozer at over 41 minutes. Won't spoil the finish, or who won (you can do that on your own), but the only time the crowd was alive was after the final bell rang. Maybe a little at the beginning, but other than that, silence. Dead silence. What's more is Elgin botched so bad, it warranted multiple "boring" chants from the crowd. Loud chants. Just brutal. At one point in the match, Silas tied Elgin to the ropes using duct tape -- but Silas took a minute to open the tape roll, and it was painfully awkward to watch him bite at it and everything. Then, Elgin one-upped his botching ass by getting his hand stuck on the top rope after Silas taped him to it. First, Elgin tried severing the tape. That took a minute and didn't work. Crowd was getting antsy. Then he had the genius idea of trying to unscrew the top turnbuckle to free himself. Two more minutes, the turnbuckle doesn't unscrew. Crowd is furious. Boring chants start. Elgin starts tearing at the tape, pulling at it. Finally, he frees himself. It was like that time Mark Henry spent five minutes trying to get the cage door open but couldn't, only much, much worse. Felt bad for the guy, he got shat on hard. Wouldn't be surprised to see it on a Botchamania. *3/4 -- just painful.
And avoid, at all costs, Elgin vs. Silas for the AAW Heritage and Heavyweight Championships in an I Quit Match. Overbooked snoozer at over 41 minutes. Won't spoil the finish, or who won (you can do that on your own), but the only time the crowd was alive was after the final bell rang. Maybe a little at the beginning, but other than that, silence. Dead silence. What's more is Elgin botched so bad, it warranted multiple "boring" chants from the crowd. Loud chants. Just brutal. At one point in the match, Silas tied Elgin to the ropes using duct tape -- but Silas took a minute to open the tape roll, and it was painfully awkward to watch him bite at it and everything. Then, Elgin one-upped his botching ass by getting his hand stuck on the top rope after Silas taped him to it. First, Elgin tried severing the tape. That took a minute and didn't work. Crowd was getting antsy. Then he had the genius idea of trying to unscrew the top turnbuckle to free himself. Two more minutes, the turnbuckle doesn't unscrew. Crowd is furious. Boring chants start. Elgin starts tearing at the tape, pulling at it. Finally, he frees himself. It was like that time Mark Henry spent five minutes trying to get the cage door open but couldn't, only much, much worse. Felt bad for the guy, he got shat on hard. Wouldn't be surprised to see it on a Botchamania. *3/4 -- just painful.
I knew it, I just knew this match was going to be lackluster but I didn't think it would be this bad. Like I said earlier, I only like these types of matches from major promotions as indy promotions can never get these types of matches right and this yet again proves it.
From a comedic perspective, I can see it being funny, but it hurt hearing Elgin get shit on SO hard. It was just horrible. He even cut a post-match promo that talked about that, saying he didn't care if we cheered him or shit on him, blah blah.
Super Smash Brothers vs Marko Estrada & Michael Style - Street Fight - NSPW Golden Opportunity IV 26.05.2012 Woah nelly this was good. It's a Street Fight and they fucking work it like a Street Fight should be worked without brawling away from the ring. Tons of hate between the two teams. They bump really hard for each other. I just pray for their sakes that the floor isn't anywhere near as hard as it looked. Estrada is really fucking good and this kinda made me think his Finlay match probably should have been even better. Chair attack which takes Stupified out absolutely ruled. Chair shots looked a bitch and the initial chair shot I swear I've never seen done like that before. Stupified sells the leg really well and amazingly doesn't ruin the short term selling later in the match. He gets taken out of the match and he basically stays out of the match except to die a little further and for the eventual finish. Weak points of the match are when Style and Uno go at it because Style isn't all that good but he's willing to bump as big as the other 3 and doesn't bring the match down. There's an awkward moment towards the end when the chairs try to ruin the match by not setting up right for Estrada and starts to look like it might fall apart but they get back on with it and get back to the brilliance. I think I know where that Elgin/Young match headed now judging by Last Chancery's post. Spots are big and they're great. They never do anything too big that it's just stupid and they save the two biggest spots till the end which was great. Splash off the ladder through a table looked as brutal I've seen that spot look. Style and Estrada's trashy whore has an awesome run in at the end which ends in her taking an awesome table bump off Uno. Finish itself feels like a really deserving climax to a match like this and it worked around Stupified's leg injury with him not having to do anything on the ground and just be able to launch himself off the top rope. Super Smash Bros should be renamed to Super Smash Brawlers because that's 3 out of 3 this year where they're hit it out of the park with gimmick matches/brawls. Seriously not that far behind their 2 big PWG gimmick matches this year.
****1/4
Lance Storm vs Kevin Steen - NSPW Golden Opportunity IV 26.05.2012 They don't do much fancy but when you get all the basic stuff right and you've two workers on the level of these 2 then you don't need to do much fancy to have a really good match. Loved Lance schooling Steen on the match and Steen having to resort to cheap eye rakes to get control. Steen works heel and because NSPW crowds are great they play along with the wrestling game because that's the idea. They work a really good back and forth final few minutes too without being spotty or your turn my turn. This was really good.
Davey Richards vs Zack Sabre Jr. - wXw Fans Appreciation Weekend Night 2 Didn't think it touched their match last year but I did like the majority of this. Mat wrestling is good for Indy standards and they do a neat job of working the match as equals throughout without ever being corny and looking like they were trading moves for the sake of trading moves. Minor Indy show so you get the more focused Davey with less bullshit. There's still some Davey bullshit though because it's still Davey Richards at the end of the day. The mannerisms are unbearable. Zack has some great selling faces and always looks like he's taking a beating better than most. Some of the strikes are a bit shitty mind. Appreciated the lack of shenanigans around the finish and Davey tapping straight out of an armbar rather than sitting in a fucking armbar for a minute.
I'll probably watch that. Haven't watched a Davey match in so long though. Wonder why he wrestle's better on smaller shows and doesn't realise it'd be so much better in ROH if he wrestled like that.
La Sombra vs. Volador Jr. - 1/22/12 - ****1/4
Flippy wrestling and spotty shit at its finest. This had me flipping out the whole match with all of the amazing spots. Definitely not for a lot of people on here, but I was thoroughly entertained.
Big Van Walter vs Zack Sabre Jr. - wXw Live In Hamburg What you'd want and expect from these two. Thought it was slightly better than their match last year. Both men have an extra years torture from Japan and thus hit even harder. Crowd brawling segment was great. More people need to do double and triple dives. Zack going through the bench the crowd were sitting on was a great spot. I would have been pissed if I was sitting there. Could have done with being less spotty at the end and longer for Walter's control segment but this was still great and showed why both of these are so great.
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship Match:
Prince Devitt(c) vs. Low Ki: ****1/4
Awesome match, Devitt's selling was amazing, Low Ki's having a really great year so far IMO
IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match:
Kazuchika Okada(c) vs. Hirooki Goto: ****1/2
Holly balls amazing match, the last mins were amazing, surprised that this match isn't as hyped as Okada vs Tana/Naito.
16 Carat Tournament Day 3
2Face, Big Van Walter, Daisuke Sekimoto & Kim Ray vs. Axeman, Karsten Beck, Robert Dreissker & Yoshihito Sasaki:****1/4 This match is like an onion. This match is like a parfait. This match has layers. This has a lot to do with the elimination gimmick. Now I don't watch a lot of WXW but from what I can gather from this match is that Beck, Dreissker, and Walters are apart of a heel stable of somesort. Walter and Sekimoto are the key players being seen as the two most dominating wrestlers. BVW is a monster. He plays a monster better than maybe anyone I have seen on an independent level. Daisuke plays the foreign star. Axeman is the hometown favorite. Sasaki is also sort of a foreign star and also rivals with Sekimoto and shows to be ultra competitive. This match builds up eventually to the big 4 in Sekimot/BVW vs. Axeman/Sasaki which was the right decision. But before that there is 2Face doing a less crazy version of Sami Callihan. There is a point where Beck finds himself in the ring with BVW. He parades him around as a winner and then goes for a schoolboy. Bad decision. Then Beck tries tagging out. Axeman jumps down from the apron first, then Sasaki follows suit, then Sasaki and Axeman pull Dreissker off the apron since he was going to do it. Standing behind Beck is Sekimoto which is bad news bears for Beck. It was great. Then Dreissker found his way out of the match when Axeman and Sasaki hit him and forced him in completing their triple team and whipping him into BVW. Needless to say BVW wasn't okay with this. So when we get to the Big 4 that's when things go from good to great. Stiff as fuck. When Sasaki and Sekimoto are in the ring together they just beat the piss out of each other. It felt right out of BJW. The way Walters and Sekimoto(or The DREAM TEAM) worked over Axeman was magnificent. Throughout the match they had a proverbial pissing match between the two trying to prove who is better but they don't mind working with each other. They also wouldn't be opposed to killing each other in a match. Sasaki feels Axeman isn't pulling his weights at points even going as far as kicking Axeman right after he had broken up a pin attempt on Axeman. A very manly way of saying "Get you shit together". Did I mention this match was beautifully stiff? I don't know why this match happened but I won't complain since it was BALLIN'!!!
Question whats your thoughts on the TNA matches in 2012 like
Alex Shelley vs Austin Aries at Against all odds 2012
Austin Aries vs Bully Ray at Sacrifice 2012
Daniels & Kaz vs AJ Styles & Kurt Angle at Slammiversary 2012
ROH Rising Above 2012 - Adam Cole vs Davey Richards: ***3/4+
BJW 2012.03.26 - Sami Callihan vs Yoshihito Sasaki: ***3/4
EVOLVE 17: AR Fox vs Ricochet - ***1/2
AJPW 2012/01/03 B Banquet 305 Review:
All Asia Tag Team Title: Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi (c) vs Akebono & Ryota Hama - ***3/4
AJPW World Jr. Heavyweight Title: Kenny Omega (c) vs Hiroshi Yamato - ****1/4+
Main-Event : AJPW World Tag Team Title: Dark Ozz & Dark Cuervo (c) vs Seiya Sanada & KAI - ***3/4
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